Simon Kiingereza

Simon Kiingereza

Simon won the "lottery" (a chance opportunity to be selected to receive a green card) to work in the United States. An East African from Uganda, he graduated with honors in business administration from the country's top university. Esteemed by his friends and colleagues in his country of origin he never imagined the difficulty he would encounter moving to America.

Thinking he could get a job in business management rather easily, he applied all over the county and got no call backs. He finally found a job doing the overnight shift of janitorial work at a restaurant where he met Jessie, Peyton and Amelio. They became his only friends.

Simon's whole life was orchestrated for him to get this chance to move to America, get the American dream, and inevitably lift his family up out of poverty in Africa. He typically sends his family all the money he can, which leaves him with very little on his side of things. He doesn't tell his family how much he struggles, or that he doesn't own a car, that all the education they sacrificed for him to get carries no weight in his new world, or that he could never have a family of his own due to the struggle.

Recently walking to catch the late night bus, he was stopped by some officers who asked for his ID of which he had forgotten at home. They immediately cuffed him, took him to the station, strip searched him, put him in a line up and jailed him over night. They released him the next day offering him no answers to his questions. That night Simon learned that not only was this place not a dream, but it could be a nightmare.